Honey Bee Obscura Podcast

Think about honey bees overwintering in a tree. There's 4 to 6 inches of insulation, pretty good ventilation, and it's lined with propolis. Now think of our bees living in a box with less than an inch of wood for protection. We pretty much don't think of wintering anymore. There's lots of bees, swarms, we can replace what we lose easily…. well, it was easy, but it's not so much anymore. Varroa cha...

There's a saying – Winter Begins in August and it's already September. It's time to start thinking about getting ready for winter. What can and what should you be thinking about? Well, if winter is cold where you are, can you move your bees to somewhere that's warm? If moving bees is at all possible. What about indoor wintering? It used to be popular and it's coming back, but the indoors are a lot...

Right now, you have to make some decisions about how to overwinter your colonies. If you live in the deep south, there probably isn't much to think about. But if you live north of warm winter weather, there's a lot that has to be done. One of these tasks is what to do with a couple of small, weak colonies, because they are just not big enough to make it on their own. Several options are available....

Beekeepers are very often asked to help friends or neighbors that have "bee" problems…. honey bees, carpenter bees, yellow jackets, hornets, bumblebees and the like. But most of us aren't exterminators. We don't have the tools, the experience, or the time to help. But "can't you just get rid of them for me?" lets you know they think you know how to do this… and are 'glad to help.' Sometimes they a...

When you finish extracting your honey crop, you have frames that have sticky, gooey honey in the cells, and on the frame surfaces. There may be some crystalized honey in some of the cells, too. Maybe even some pollen stored there. So how do you clean up this mess so when you go to store the supers with these frames in them for the winter, they will be safe? Kim and Jim take a look at dealing with...

What do you do about ugly or mean bees? It can be difficult to determine which colony in a beeyard with several colonies is the one, or maybe one of several, that has scouting guard bees meet you at the gate when you go to a beeyard. If you can determine which colony is the one with the problems, why is it behaving so aggressively? Several reasons come to mind – something is bothering it at night,...

Every spring we beekeepers buy packages and set up nucs. Come summer, we start to look at what is going right and what may be going… well… not so right. Or at least, something is going but we're not quite certain just what ! In this episode, Kim and Jim discuss the hives they started this past spring and compare notes. They're only 30 miles apart and you might think weather and time have treated t...

Beekeepers talk a lot about not having enough food or enough good food for their bees due to all manner of development, agriculture spread, and agriculture in general. To help fix that problem beekeepers should be looking at doing some planting for bees, which is what Kim and Jim talk about this week. But it's not as simple as it might sound. If you are planning on something for your yard, the bas...

Kim and Jim ask some interesting questions this week, maybe some you've asked yourself, or perhaps you asked a close friend. For instance, should a colony being used for honey production spend time and energy raising drones? Or should a beekeeper be getting rid of drones? There are some who believe so. And where do you go to get good information when you have a honey bee question? The web?  And if...

Have you ever had European Foulbrood (EFB) in one or more of your hives? How do you know if it was EFB? What does it look like? What does it smell like? Does it smell like American Foulbrood (AFB), or look like AFB? If you're not sure, how do you find out? Who can you call? And what can you do about it if it is EFB? Burn, treat, scorch, feed, let it alone because it will get better? And if you nee...

It's been hot in Ohio so far this summer (and a lot of other places too) but it's also been wet.  Hot and wet can make keeping bees a lot harder than normal. Kim and Jim talk about hot summers and their bees. Kick the air conditioner down a couple of degrees, pour yourself a glass of your favorite beverage and listen in. Jim is visiting up in Michigan this week, and it's been hot there, too. They...

How many colonies had to be replaced last year? How many in winter, summer, total? How many beekeepers were surveyed? How many commercial operations, how many sideline operations, and how many hobby beekeepers? It used to be called the annual colony loss survey, but even that has changed because one thing they have found is that colony counts aren't decreasing, because they are replaced, and are n...

A question from a book written 107 years ago comes up for discussion. "How do you keep your bees from bothering your neighbors?" Back then, it was mostly cattle and horses beekeepers were worried about Today? It's the people in the house right next door, their swimming pool, their bird feeders and waterers and the water for their pooch. First, is it legal to keep bees where you are? Then how do yo...

It's rare, very rare, but sometimes beekeepers have to kill all the bees in a colony. It can be a tragic, emotional and usually it's an expensive experience. Or it can be a life saving act to save the lives of friends, neighbors and family. At the very least, it will render a box of dangerous or sick bees no longer dangerous or reduce the chance of spreading disease across the county. At any rate,...

Let's face it. Unless you live in an isolated part of the world, if you keep bees, you will need to eventually deal with encounters between your bees and your neighbors. Encounters don't have to be negative. There are strategies you can use to minimize 'bad publicity' and 'hard feelings.'  Some beekeeping clubs have written down these strategies and developed rules, Golden Rules , for beekeepers t...

Packages arrive with a queen and together are installed in a hive of some kind. In a few days to a week the queen is released from her travel cage by either the bees or the beekeeper. Then the evaluation of that queen, and the bees, too, begins. How good is this queen? And when should I be able to decide if she needs replacing. A week? 2 weeks? A month? And how do you decide? There are some basic...

Today, Kim & Jim review questions and answers asked in an ancient A. I. Root Co. publication, published in 1910. What's changed, and what hasn't? Kim and Jim tackle questions asked 121 years ago. You'll be surprised at what they find. Do gentle bees make as much honey as mean bees? A question you still hear because sometimes it seems mean bees are more productive, right? Maybe, maybe not. What's t...

What is tanging? Basically, beekeepers use some sort of device, an old cooking pot for instance, to make a loud noise by beating it with a spoon or stick, while chasing an escaping swarm. It is thought this may convince the bees that a storm with thunder is approaching and they need to find a place to land, now, and then the beekeeper can capture them and return them to their home. When a beekeepe...

Honey bees are purchased from commercial operations in business to sell bees to beekeepers. They can be sold as complete eight or ten frame hives with a queen, frames with comb, bees and brood and some stored food. Or, they may be sold as a 5-frame small colony, traditionally called a nucleus colony, or more commonly a Nuc, with a queen, comb, food and bees. Bees can also be bought in bulk – by th...

Old comb. What is old comb? Old comb is that which is darkened through generations of tiny bee's feet (ok, for the technically minded, tarsus and tarsal claws...) running across its surface. Is it good for years or should beekeepers pull and replace it?  At what point should it be pulled?  In this episode of Honey Bee Obscura, Kim and Jim discuss all things Old Comb. After listening to the episode...

Spring inspections, especially early spring, need a balance of not too often, but often enough to avoid problems. The first thing you see is…what's left from last fall. In the south, these inspections took place some time ago, and in the north, they are just wrapping up, but what you find early on will help determine what needs to be done now. Mite testing is certainly on the agenda, but for today...

Why do you keep a box full of bugs that you just know will sting? It should be an easy answer, but there's more here that you might think, especially if you're just getting started. Even if you've been doing this for years and you're doing everything right, someday, you will get stung, no matter what. But what about the beekeeper dressed in only shorts and a T-Shirt, who will take a colony apart,...

So, how do you eat comb honey? It isn't a mystery, but until you have tried eating comb honey, it can be a tad daunting. At first, it's a beautiful product. Snow white cappings, beautiful honey, the perfect sweetener. But then, you take a sample and that chunk of comb honey begins to leak, and the honey runs out and covers the bottom of the dish you have it on, along with tiny chunks of the wax fr...

Trapping pollen will give you a source of good food for your bees, and it's for free. And why more beekeepers don't do it is interesting, but understandable. There are a host of pollen substitutes on the market that a beekeeper can simply buy and feed to the bees. Pollen traps add a layer of work and cost to their beekeeping efforts that many don't want to undertake….and that's too bad. Of course...

If you keep good records every year, you'll know about when to expect the various nectar flows your areas has almost every year and that your bees need to make a honey crop. Of course, your bees will tell you when a nectar flow starts, and when it's over. Tell you they will. Open a colony before a flow and the bees are busy looking for food. Open one during a good flow and you will find the happie...